If anything can drive this Irishman into a fit of cursing, it's the need to create a regular expression quickly. With a little application, I know I could learn to create them myself but I figured some time back that the frequency with which I use them would not equate to the time invested in the study. So, I either have to rely on ones that I have, and can never locate, or turn to a good tool.

Well, I was reading Professional ASP.NET 3.5 in C# and VB by Scott Hansleman and others recently when I saw mention of a Regular Expression Editor in VS 2008. This was news to me! Then I noticed a regular expression facility in the Find and Replace tool (CTRL-F); how long has that one been around? Anyway, it was just what I needed for some basic regex's for email and phone numbers.